Calleja to perform with Domingo at London's Royal Opera House

Tenor Joseph Calleja will perform alongside Placido Domingo at the Royal Opera House in London next year, the ROH announced on its website.

Domingo will take on one of the great roles for baritone as the troubled Simon Boccanegra in the Verdi opera of the same name in June and July 2010, while Calleja will play the tenor role of Gabriele Adorno, the lover of Boccanegra's long-lost daughter, Amelia.

Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera's music director, will conduct an exceptional cast that includes soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Amelia and bass Ferruccio Furlanetto as Boccanegra's old foe, Fiesco.

This is not the first time Calleja has performed with the opera legend. In 1999, the two sang together at Domingo's gala concert when the Maltese singer won the Operalia competition. They also performed together six weeks ago at the 125th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera house in New York.

When contacted, Calleja said that to date it had been difficult to collaborate with Domingo in an opera because they were both leading tenors. This time round, however, they would sing at different registers - Domingo as baritone and Calleja as tenor.

Calleja said: "Domingo is a living legend - there is no other artist living today who has sung so many different roles at such a high level for such a long time. Despite his now advancing age, his voice has retained its youthful freshness, which is extraordinary given how much he taxed his instrument."

Calleja is also performing at the Royal Opera House in Convent Garden next month in Verdi's La Traviata. This will be screened live at cinemas in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

He will be playing the leading role of Alfredo along with Renée Fleming as Violetta. The Royal Opera House website highlighted the performance saying it "promises to be a highlight of the season".

His recent performance in La Boheme alongside the acclaimed soprano Anna Netrebko in Munich was lauded and he was singled out as the star of the show: "Calleja, with his powerful, virile voice, was the one who, as Rodolfo, turned the evening into an experience."

This reviewer of Klassik Magazin couldn't help but joke that "of course nobody believed for a moment that this well-fed singer faced starvation and poverty as his daily lot", even though the Maltese tenor has made an effort to lose weight in recent months.

In a review of the same performance, the German newspaper Abendzeitung wrote about "the surprise of the evening": "Because of the wind instrument brightness of the voice and (Joseph Calleja's) stiff acting, he reminded us of the good and bad of Pavarotti more than we would have liked it."

Hailing Calleja as "the tenor of the future" in a review of his Rigoletto performance, The New Yorker commented that his "big, honeyed tone - the purest and most appealing Italianate sound since Pavarotti - has acquired a slightly darker tinge, but certain elements of craft (breath control, dynamics) remain subjects for him to work on, or perhaps, ignore. (The crowd is with him)."

Classic TV was mesmerised by his performance as Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore at the Met: "Calleja demonstrated a winning stage presence and great comic élan. His voice was even stronger and more assured than on his recordings."

Calleja will be performing with Michael Bolton in his only Malta concert of the year at the Luxol grounds in St Andrew's on July 19. Tickets are available from maltaticket.com as well as Vodafone, Exotique and Agenda outlets.